


what are the chances that we survive

by lavenderseaslug



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: F/M, an affair to remember
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:16:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29756049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavenderseaslug/pseuds/lavenderseaslug
Summary: The bed is cold and she wakes up alone, doesn’t even hear the shower running. She wonders if anyone has noticed they’ve stopped arriving to work at the same time, that they take two separate cars.---Baird Kellman never died, but Roman and Gerri still find a way
Relationships: Gerri Kellman/Roman "Romulus" Roy
Comments: 17
Kudos: 49





	what are the chances that we survive

_I was working up a conversation  
_ _But I didn't know how to start  
_ _Cause I didn't think you had the patience  
_ _And I didn't think you had the heart_

_(Inheritance - John Foreman)_

The bed is cold and she wakes up alone, doesn’t even hear the shower running. She wonders if anyone has noticed they’ve stopped arriving to work at the same time, that they take two separate cars.

No note on the kitchen counter, no breakfast dishes in the sink. Just Charles in his terrarium, older than their marriage, watching her with clear eyes as he chews a large leaf.

“At least he feeds you,” she says, not that Baird’s ever made her breakfast. Ordered in, yes, but she’s never seen him over a stove, not in the thirty years they’ve known each other. It’s something he bragged to Logan about once, though the joke fell flat. Logan looked down his nose at Baird, practically panting for a laugh, a chuckle, and instead told the story of making his family meals for a week as a young boy when they all had the flu. Whether it’s true or not, it’s the Logan lore that helps keep him the mythical figure at the top of the company.

The coffee pot is empty, she sets a new brew going as she showers and dresses, pulling her hair up into a bun, pinning it back, straightening her glasses, her pearls.

There’s been a tightness at the company recently, the top floors feeling more and more like glass houses and they’re all waiting for the first stone throw. Kendall’s preening and primping, ready to be named as Logan’s successor. Roman’s back after too long a time in Los Angeles, ridiculous beaded bracelets and sage burning.

If Baird is feeling sore about not being named the CEO replacement, he hasn’t said, and Gerri hasn’t asked. They’ve eaten silent dinners across from each other while she scrolls through emails and he picks apart stock market changes.

Her phone rings in the car and he’s on the other end, “Baird Kellman” scrolling across her screen. “Do you have the files on the Degas Group in your office?” he asks.

“Good morning to you too,” she says, voice clipped. Even a year ago, she might’ve said it with a smile. There’s silence and he’s just waiting for her to answer his question. She can imagine his pinched face, stern and distant, just echoes left of the man she married. There’s temptation to wait him out, to make him say good morning too, to pretend that they’re happy families. But instead she just says, “Yes, green file, top drawer” and hangs up her phone.

Their offices are next to each other, whether by design or not, Gerri’s never asked. He got the MBA and she got the JD and they ended up in the same place anyway. She was in the steno pool when they met, typing her days away, spending her nights studying, and he just seemed….she almost can’t remember what he seemed. Different, alive, excited, best friends with a man on the rise, and it seemed worthwhile to hitch her wagon to that star.

She knows there are whispers of nepotism that follow her around, but she also knows those whispers don’t last long, not when she swoops in to save the company, when she lifts an eyebrow and silences some bombastic man in the boardroom. Maybe she earned her place in spite of her marriage, had to prove herself beyond being someone’s wife.

Her filing cabinet is still open, Baird’s coffee cup resting atop. Whether it’s vindictive or careless, she’s not sure, some way of marking his territory, some way of proving how little he cares. Her office is his office, his mess is her mess. But she quietly cleans it up, the office Roomba, efficiently whirring around, keeping everything in order. Drawer closed, cup in the trash, slate wiped clean.

The family is all upstate, some impromptu baseball game for Logan’s birthday. There’s a party in the evening, her dress for it dry cleaned and hanging in her closet. It means there’s a little less pressure, no one storming through the halls or yelling in offices. Kendall did his whole thing with Vaulter and then got in a helicopter. Now it’s just the Kellmans at the top of the building.

Frank sends her a video of Roman taunting a child about hitting a home run, immediately texts back that they have to fix it, forwards a standard NDA, suggests a check to go along with it. It’s always a surprise when she remembers that Roman isn’t the youngest of the Roy children, his Irish twin, her goddaughter, much more mature, much more presentable. It’s too bad Shiv never wanted the helm, she’s the best option they have for a captain.

And then the world goes to shit. Her phone practically explodes with alerts - Frank fired, Logan incapacitated, Logan dead, Roman murdered Logan, a wave of nonsense she has no way to come through, nothing to confirm, no one to ask.

The only information she knows for sure is that Logan gets rushed to the same hospital where Baird had a triple bypass five years ago. He might even be on the same floor, where people with too much money and not enough friends stay.

Everyone on the floor is on their phones, reading news alerts, sending texts. She knows what her first move is, even if she doesn’t know the ones after that. “We’re choking the river,” she calls out, and heads turn to her. “No information out, Waystar Royco is now a beaver dam. Anyone caught spreading unconfirmed information is going to lose their job. And no information has been confirmed.”

Her heels make muffled thumps against the carpet, every person watching her, no sound from any of them. She knocks on Baird’s door, doesn’t wait for him to signal her in. “Stocks are shit, Gerri,” he says, never one for pleasantries. She thinks she liked that once. “If Logan goes…” He trails off and she knows the end of the sentence.

“Get to the hospital and see what you can find out. The family should be there.” Baird busses his face against hers as he leaves, a gesture that stymies her, something she can’t remember him doing in months, years. Maybe it’s because his oldest friend might be at death’s door, maybe it’s some carpe diem, appreciate each moment bullshit, but his skin is cold, and it leaves her feeling nothing.

She closes herself in her office, takes a deep breath. And then gets back to work.

* * *

It’s not good, but it’s not terrible. Logan is alive even if he’s not saying anything. There’s some new cousin buzzing around, tall and awkward, turned into an errand boy. And Gerri’s back at the hospital where her husband almost died. The kids are in a frenzy, she can see the hyenas nipping at the door, everyone trying to find the foothold that gives them the best leg up.

Roman is the one who sidles up to her while she’s making a cup of tea, Lipton the only thing available, and she wonders if they drew straws and he came up short. “So, Gerri, how you doing?” He hops up onto the counter, so painfully trying to be casual that she pulls back, clears her throat.

“Oh, I’m fine. This is where they brought Baird, so it’s a little…” She can still picture him on the gurney, her phone buzzing in her clenched hand, daughters anxious to know about their father. The one time where she felt things spinning out of control without a backup plan.

“Baird? The guy with the tortoise? He’s still around though, right?” Roman’s head whips back and forth like Baird could appear at any moment. Gerri wonders what her husband would think about being referred to as ‘the guy with the tortoise.’ It’s not exactly an incorrect label, for a man who got sued for purchasing an illegal tortoise just because it reminded him a childhood vacation in Thailand, but she doubts that’s how Baird wants to be remembered.

“He’s around, yes,” Gerri says, and waves her hand, waves the conversation away. Roman hops a little, fidgety, and she wonders if he’s back in the city to stay, girlfriend in tow, a seat at the table dangled before him as bait. She opens her mouth to excuse herself, to go somewhere else, anywhere else, but he beats her to the punch.

“So, Gerri. I just want to thank you for captaining us through this shitstorm. You’re doing a good job. You're, um, a real good job-doer.” She against one of the pale hospital couches, meets his gaze, doesn’t even know what goes on behind those eyes, if it’s just a hamster spinning on a wheel, pushing words out with no thought behind them. “I suck at the whole corporate flirt thing.vYou know, I just - I like to lube up and fuck, you know.”

That’s more than she ever wanted to know about his personal life, though she’s had to deal with more than her fair share of cover-ups from his shitty seedy life in Los Angeles. “Okay.” If there’s one thing she’s good at, it’s waiting out the pauses, playing chicken for information, for conversation.

Roman breathes, slides down the arm of the couch, his ass hitting the seat and she wonders if he has some aversion to his feet touching the floor. “Okay. So, um, for me and Shiv, the whole Kendall thing doesn't work. And no offense to Blair -”

“Baird. Your sister’s godfather,” she corrects.

“Right, Baird. Right, no offense to him, but he’s not, like, top of the chain material, at least, you know, not to us. So we were thinking, general counsel,” he gestures at her, “you know where the bodies are buried. You probably buried them yourself.” He giggles, high-pitched and strained and she just huffs out a breath, waits for him to get where he’s going.

“So, you would have the family's support to step in and take the reins.” He says it like he’s offering her the world, when she knows he’s just offering a graveyard, and she’s the one who carved the headstones.

“Oh, that's a very generous offer, but I'm going to have to decline.” She pulls the teabag out of her cup, drops it in the trash, and then meets Roman’s eyes, can see the confusion there.

“Okay. Can I ask why?” He’s fidgety again and she knows he doesn’t want to go back with a ‘no’ to Shiv, doesn’t want to have to go through the list of company employees who wouldn’t fuck everything up. It’s a short list, she can only think of five people she’d put on it.

“Why I don't want the job that makes your brain explode?” She can see the vein in his forehead, thinks he might be the next in line for an aneurysm if just asking her the question makes him this anxious.

“Okay, but, uh,” he runs a hand through his hair, looks up at her, looks up at her the way he did when he was a kid, when he was in college, whenever he needed her to get him out of some kind of scrape. “Gerri, excuse me, but I've always thought of you, and I mean this

in the best possible way, as a stone-cold killer bitch.”

It’s not a compliment, and yet it is. She blinks, bites back the smile threatening to spill. “Who says you don't know how to flirt?” He chuckles awkwardly, twisting his body away from her, so he can stand up without too much difficulty, the first time she’s seen him sit like a normal person since he got to the hospital.

“So that’s a no,” he says, his shoulder touching hers. “Just going to walk away from the best offer you’ll ever get?” She can see the stress on his face, on his pale skin, made worse in the fluorescent lighting.

“You think that’s the best offer I’ve ever gotten?” she scoffs, and can’t help but think how naive he is, how clueless. Thinks he’ll get eaten alive if he doesn’t get smarter, wiser. “I’ve had better offers than you, Roman Roy.” He gulps, she can see his Adam’s apple move up and down. A text message comes in, distracting them both, and it’s her phone. She holds it up instead of excusing herself, and walks away, slides her thumb against her phone, taps in her password. Vaulter’s writing an article and it’s one more thing Kendall’s fucked up this week.

She remembers the hallways of the hospital, even distantly recognizes two of the nurses, though she’s not surprised that recognition doesn’t register on their faces. She wasn’t a good patient’s wife, wasn’t in his room every hour of every day, missed visiting hours more often than not. He wasn’t even awake, he doesn’t know that she wasn’t there, wasn’t holding his hand. His job was still waiting for him when he was better, _that_ was what she could do. So the nurses don’t know her face, but being here gives her the vague desire for the cafeteria grilled cheese.

* * *

Baird isn’t home when she gets in, she sees his phone blinking on the kitchen counter, so he hasn’t gone far. They’ve barely crossed paths in days, just meetings in the office, but missing each other at home. The only evidence that he still lives in their house is Charles, and that he’s always well-fed. Baird always says he finds his tortoise calming, a reminder of good days, has a chair set up across from the enormous terrarium where he can just sit and watch. It’s more attention than he pays her, though she wouldn’t want to be stared at by Baird Kellman, doesn’t begrudge Charles that experience.

Once upon a time, she might’ve, when she was young and he would tuck her hair behind her ear and tell her how beautiful she was. When he didn’t have wrinkles and a laugh clogged with cigar smoke. When it felt like life and happiness weren’t mutually exclusive. If she had any friends, they’d tell her it’s a rough patch, that retirement will be their time to reconnect.

“It’s not that your father’s an asshole,” she told Hannah once, when her daughter asked, “it’s that we’re not the same people we were. And we’d rather be the people we are now than two people in love with each other.” Hannah looked repulsed, sad, discouraged, still besotted with the idea of true love and soulmates. But Gerri’s never been known to sugarcoat, never been known to give the easy answers. You choose your life, your love or your work, and she’s lucky enough that life and work intersect. She thinks Baird would say the same.

Her phone buzzes against her thigh, a text from Roman, and she wonders if she’ll regret giving him her number. He’s only ever sent her emails or called her office, patched in through her secretary, and she’s only ever given him legal advice or told him to fuck off. But this is a time to have allies, to keep connections, and every Roy that’s on her side is one less she’ll have to fight later.

There’s also the part of her that thinks he might be the dark horse of the Roy children. He’s not living in some ridiculous house in New Mexico, he’s not a holier-than-thou liberal who looks down on the company, and he’s not Kendall. And if the first meeting with Kendall and Roman at the helm is anything to go by, Roman needs more than a little chaperoning. Mentoring. He needs _something_.

Why shouldn’t she be the one to offer it? Better her than Frank or, god forbid, Karl.

She can hear Baird’s key turn in the lock as she pulls out her phone, wonders if he’s been making plans, side deals, making lifeboats. He isn’t naive but he isn’t cutthroat either. Roman’s message flashes on her screen:

_Can you sue my trainer? I think he’s trying to murder me._

She gives him her number and this is what he does with it.

“Hey, Ger,” Baird says, pulling her attention from her phone, and his voice just sounds tired. “Another fucking day.”

“And more of them ahead.” It’s not platitudes and it never has been. “Are you on Kendall these days? He’s drowning.” The calls from the bank, his painful posturing doing more harm than good.

“His father casts a long shadow,” he says, rubbing at his eyes. “Better him than Roman, though. Can you imagine that clown on the phone with ICBC?” Baird chuckles, reaches for the remote and flicks on the television.

Gerri looks back down at her phone, the clown waiting for her to respond.

_I think it’s unethical to sue someone for the service you paid them for._

There are three dots, spinning, loading, and then nothing. She wonders if he’s ever heard her make a joke before.

He’s not the only one who can be funny.

* * *

She wears black to the RECNY ball and Baird tells her she looks funereal. “As opposed to your very ebullient suit,” she snaps back, winding her arms through her silk wrap. He doesn’t offer to help, just sits there in his charcoal suit, scrolling through emails. Or text messages. Or maybe some fantasy sports league. She knows he keeps up with Scottish football, if only to rib Logan about a Hibernian loss every once in a while.

They ride together and it’s quiet. She fiddles with her earrings, turning over Tom’s bullshit press conference plan in her mind, trying to decide the best way to tell him it’s a colossally fucked idea. And there’s whatever it is Kendall is doing, misguided concern for his father, the business, or just flagrant mutiny that he’s too far gone to have any perspective on. Baird’s phone buzzes, lights up the backseat and she tries to read it, strains her eyes without moving, doesn’t want him to know she wants to know.

“Logan’s running late,” he says, sliding his phone into his coat pocket, his wedding ring hitting the plastic case with a dull thud. Gerri looks at her own ring, diamonds and gold, moves her thumb against the band. It’s due for a cleaning, she makes a note on her phone, puts it on her assistant’s schedule to remind her.

There’s never really a _good_ event with the Roys; just different levels of chaos to be managed. She can mostly be a bystander here, though, get awkwardly shepherded to the other side of the room by Willa, watch Roman taunt some waiter who wants to fuck Grace, nothing that will really screw her day tomorrow.

Her name card is right next to Baird’s, ‘Geraldine Kellman’ written in crisp black ink on the sharp white card. It’s been a long time since she’s enjoyed sitting next to her husband at a fundraiser or a gala, or any number of engagements where their names get placed beside each other on a table. He used to lean over, whisper snide comments in her ear to see if he could make her laugh.

And then he just stopped. He flirted with the waitstaff instead, made the same snide comments to Frank or Bill, clapped them on the back. It’s one thing to be invisible at work, where it benefits her, benefits everyone. It’s another to be invisible to your husband during off hours.

She thinks about rearranging the cards, about sitting somewhere else. Always tempting, the road not taken, the what ifs that fade away silently. But ultimately impractical. She sets her purse on the chair and goes to find Tom, tells him to can the fucking press conference and he looks like a punched teddy bear the rest of the night.

Logan makes his speech and Kendall looks pale and nervous. Tom holds Shiv’s hand and Marcia smiles benevolently, the queen surveying her subjects. And for all the kerfuffle leading up to it, Logan doesn’t embarrass himself, or the company. She hears Baird make a comment about the stocks going up just from the announcement that he’s back.

“I hear Tom’s mom is flicking your bean,” Roman says, sidling up to her after the dance, after the dinner, a giggle snort catching in his throat. “Getting that Minnesota hotdish loving, huh? Tell me, did you and _my_ mom ever, you know?” He wiggles his fingers, approximates something that Gerri supposes could be sex.

“Caroline didn’t have the imagination,” she says blandly. “But Marcia…” Roman’s mouth falls open and she gives him a conspiratorial wink. “I’m not that interesting.” His jaw snaps up, brow wrinkled like he realizes he’s just been duped the same way Tom Wamsgans was and it’s insulting.

“You could be,” he says. “Like right now you’re just fucking nerdy Clark Kent but maybe you step into a phone booth and it’s, like, Super Gerri. Spandex and shit.” He’s got that little giggle again and she’s almost not annoyed by it.

“Wouldn’t you like to see it?” It’s not really a question, but Roman’s face flushes like maybe he’s actually thought about it before. “Something for the spank bank,” she adds, patting his shoulder, feeling him stiffen, and she walks away.

Greg finds her before she leaves with Baird, still as gangly and cringy as ever. “Good kid. Smart move,” she says, because it’s what he wants to hear. “Keep talking.” He calls her ma’am and she feels something snap. Wishes she could transform into some kind of superhero and fly away. Instead she smiles tightly, and gets into the waiting car with Baird, smells wine on his breath, sees a stain in his shirt.

She didn’t talk to him once, the whole night.

* * *

It’s strange how everything seems to happen all at once. Kendall tries to take over the company - Gerri even tries to help him. And it implodes, it absolutely falls apart. She’s smart enough to dodge the spray, to get away unscathed, Logan’s eyes passing over her without an accusatory glance. Baird looks studiously superior as Asha leaves, as Frank slinks out, as Kendall’s shoulders sag. Roman is sinking in his chair, as if he’s hoping the floor will swallow him up.

She takes pity on him, clears her throat and points to the next item on the agenda. And Logan sits down, his simmering anger, his pretense that nothing of note even happened, all of it more intimidating than his yelling, than his belligerent rage.

The board meeting ends quickly, everyone anxious to leave, anxious to get out of this glass room that seems filled to the brim with tension, like an aquarium about to shatter, water falling through the sides. She catches Roman’s wrist, her fingers light, barely there against his wrist. Her hand stays against his skin too long, and his eyes are dark. When she cocks her head towards her office, he follows, mute, shoulders cowed.

“What are we going to do?” she says, and he looks at her like no one’s ever asked him. Baird walks by, peering in through the glass, raises his hand like he’s going to knock, then thinks better of it. Something eases in Gerri’s chest, something like not wanting those two men alone in her office, with only her between them.

He’s all but wringing his hands and so she gives him a plan, a focus, a purpose. Management training and at least pretending not to be a fuck-up for a few hours a day, enough to get him some respect. A paper subscription to the Wall Street Journal that can sit on his desk and make him look serious.

“Should I get fucking fake glasses too, so people think I’m some kind of smart nerd?” He sounds petulant but she knows he’ll make the right choice.

“If you think that will set you apart from the rest of your family,” she says lightly, and his lips twist into a smirk, like he likes that she’s funny, likes that it seems like she doesn’t care. He follows her back out of her office, his hand just ghosting against her lower back, and something thrums inside of her, and she can’t decide if she wants him to touch her or if she wants him as far away as possible.

Baird is home for dinner, and they eat like nothing happened at work, like the world didn’t explode, like they don’t have big gaping problems to fix. They have sex in their bed, in her bed, and it’s quiet and perfunctory and he doesn’t kiss her, and all she can think about is Roman’s wrist, Roman’s hand against her back, Roman’s dark eyes. Baird comes and she doesn’t; he goes to the bathroom to wipe himself off, disappears into the hallway and she hears him go downstairs. She slides her hand between her legs and dreams up a smirk, a wry smile, someone who laughs when she makes a joke.

* * *

Somehow, Roman always finds her. They’re seated next to each other at dinners, he weaves his way through crowds straight to her, like she’s got a locator beacon on her forehead, he always brings her a drink. He whispers ridiculous things in her ear and seems to like it when she tells him to hush.

She doesn’t exactly know what’s different, what’s changed, but she thinks he might be flirting. And she knows she’s letting him. It’s nice, to have someone to talk to when everyone else is boring, to have someone to lock eyes with when Connor says something truly absurd. There’s a camaraderie she’s never felt at Waystar Royco before, not even when she and Baird got together.

Which is why, when he goes off to Florida, it feels like there’s an empty space, a giant abyss, right beside her. It feels like she’s lost an arm and she has to learn how to move, how to cope in a world that suddenly doesn’t feel made to accommodate her. It unsettles her, how used to him she’s become. The scrawny Roy kid that never knows the right thing to say.

And then she learned that he always knows the right thing to say, just very rarely chooses to say it.

The first time he calls her, it’s just to talk, and she finds she missed the pattern of his speech, the expletives slipped in between mundanities. He complains about wearing a costume at his own company’s theme park and she tells him to stop whining. “Buck up, kid,” she says, sarcasm bleeding through each one syllable word. She thinks she hears his breath catch, but then he’s back, he’s annoying and rude, and she just wishes he was going to be at the Royco Business Symposium that she knows will be dull as shit.

The second time he calls her, she’s alone for the night, Baird off with Logan, off somewhere else. And the second call is different, his energy frantic and baiting, like he’s trying to pull something out of her, like there’s something she needs. And it’s easy enough to figure out what it is he’s after, and easier than she thought to get him there. She hears him panting through the line, hears the sound of his hand against his dick. She wonders if this counts as cheating. She wonders if she cares.

He comes back after six weeks and the first thing he notices is her bare finger, no wedding ring to be found. “Get divorced while I was gone?” he asks, smirking and smug and she wonders if she would ever be foolish enough to throw her life away for him.

“Ring cleaning,” she answers, because it only took her six months to make it happen, but there’s a certain amount of pleasure in being noticed, in knowing she’s not the only one looking. If there’s disappointment on his face, he hides it quickly, and she wonders if he’s already thrown something away for her.

She’s the one to make the third phone call, and it makes her feel silly and young and naked, all her armor stripped away. The door to the bathroom is locked and she has a towel pressed against the line of light that seeps in from the bedroom. Baird is away again, but she’d rather be safe than sorry. He seems to be away more often than not and she wonders if he’s got a girl somewhere too. Maybe they’re both doing this to each other, and it’s just what people do.

Roman warms quickly to the task, eagerly lapping up her insults, fucks and shits and dammits falling out of his mouth and into her ear, and her hand works between her leg, her phone pressed against her shoulder so her other hand is free, plucking at her nipples, rolling them between her fingers, back and forth, erect in the cold air of the bathroom.

She wishes she had a cigarette when he hangs up, something to take the edge off, something to keep her hands busy. She has a missed call from Baird, telling her he’ll be gone another night. She turns the tap on, runs the bathwater so hot it makes her skin pink, and when she sinks under, she imagines what it’s like to be a lobster, boiled alive.

* * *

Roman makes her offers, partnerships, gives her a world where they’re at the top. She never gives him an answer, not really. She skirts the issue, takes him to bed instead. Sits on his face to keep him quiet, bucking against his tongue, his hands leaving imprints on her thighs.

They get hotel rooms and use fake names. He finds her room on company trips. She thinks about getting a second phone. Sometimes it feels dirty, sometimes it’s exciting. More often than not, it’s insulting that Baird never even notices. She’s just a filing cabinet to him, something reliable and stuck in the corner, there when he needs some paperwork, gone when he doesn’t. It makes her want to be careless and stupid, reckless in the face of the reputation she’s built for herself.

“You have nothing to lose,” she says to Roman one night, when the only light in the room is the glow from their cell phones, they’re each scrolling through their own feed, and she wonders how different they are. He turns his head to look at her, those eyes always so inscrutable, though she heard Shiv say once that it looked like he’s eye-fucking her, and Roman laughed it off, said that’s just his face.

“What do you have to lose?” he asks, like it’s not everything. She opens her mouth to say her marriage, to say her good standing, to say other people’s opinions.

She hasn’t cared about any of those things in so long. Does that mean they’re already lost?

Her phone screen goes black, and she rolls on her side away from him, sticks one leg out from underneath the duvet, her foot pale in the dark. _You have nothing to lose_ echoes in her mind, the only thought in her head until she falls asleep. And when she wakes up, Roman’s gone and the room is empty.

He doesn’t call her for a week, avoids her in the office, leaves messages with her assistant if he needs anything from her. It’s like when he went to Florida but worse because now he’s seen her naked, had his mouth pressed between her thighs, seen her hands fisted in the sheets while she tried to stave off a moan, tried to hold onto control right up until the moment she couldn’t. And she’s seen him too, curled up in bed, hair soft against his forehead, the look on his face when he wakes up and sees her looking at him.

Baird comes to her office and leans over her shoulder to point at something on her computer screen, and he feels so big, heavy, large. He takes up so much space and never even asked if he could. He says he’ll see her at home, and she thinks of that tortoise, who carries his home around on his back.

She texts Roman, her fingers finding their messages through muscle memory alone.

_What do I have to lose?_


End file.
